


i am lost, in the robes of all this light

by morallygreywaren



Series: women, warriors, witches [2]
Category: The Old Guard (Movie 2020)
Genre: Canon Divergence, F/F, Fluff, Hurt/Comfort, Immortal Wives, M/M, Mild Angst, The search for Quynh, also booker/nile if you squint, also slight, and we die like men again, andy doesn't become mortal, because we're still unbeta'd, booker is not exiled, can't guarantee accuracy for, featuring a bunch of historical time periods that i did research but again, i promise i actually get to the fluff this time!!, my two immortal warrior wives deserve it after all
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-18
Updated: 2020-09-18
Packaged: 2021-03-08 03:08:09
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,431
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26518753
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/morallygreywaren/pseuds/morallygreywaren
Summary: “I don’t want to be out there,” she says, “but I don’t mind being in here. It feels safe, with you.” Andy takes Quynh’s hand and pulls it towards her face.“You are,” she whispers, kisses every one of her knuckles, grazing them with her lips, her teeth, like a rosary. “You are.”Andy's never given up searching for Quynh. And what fate tears apart, it will often bring back together - even if not always in the way we expect.
Relationships: Andy | Andromache of Scythia/Quynh | Noriko
Series: women, warriors, witches [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1928086
Comments: 18
Kudos: 138





	i am lost, in the robes of all this light

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Avanie](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Avanie/gifts).



> For Avanie, because I want her to feel better, and because I _promised_. I hope you can live with the typos and some historical inaccuracies, even though I have done my best to research this.
> 
> This is a sequel to [a thicket of shadows is a poor coat](https://archiveofourown.org/works/25404487), but can be read completely independently.
> 
> The idea for this comes from [this post on tumblr](https://www.tumblr.com/blog/view/morallygreywaren/628264034209300480), which points out that an iron coffin would never hold up at the bottom of the ocean for 500 years, and that Quynh might escape the coffin but would still take a while to actually find the shore again.
> 
> Also just to let you know, I've done a bit of hand waving when it comes to the actual canon: Booker doesn't get exiled (he never betrays them in this one, actually) and Andy doesn't become mortal.
> 
> Finally, feel free to listen to [Hold On](https://open.spotify.com/album/2EfmyRWheMtmVTCIsptsLi) by Chord Overstreet while reading this (as I did writing), but it _will_ increase the likelihood of you crying.

**1596**

Andy kicks the side of their boat in frustration. Or maybe just to feel something again. It’s hard to tell these days.

“I think we need to pause this,” she says, looking out at the sea, but she can tell that Joe and Nicky have heard her.

They’ve been looking for Quynh for around five years at this point, and it is getting harder every day, every hour, every moment that passes. There are moments when she wishes she could forget, only then of course remembering is so much worse.

She hasn’t cried in a really long time.

“How do you mean, boss?” Joe asks. “Sail to shore, rest up for a few days, then come back?”

They’ve done that a few times, when they needed to stock up on supplies, or when yet another lead has proven to be a fruitless endeavour. She is at a point where she unsure what they’re even asking people anymore, what she had hoped for when they set out to go after Quynh. That the iron coffin would be floating in the open sea, just waiting for them to fish it out?

No, she’s always known where that coffin ended up. Only what is she supposed to do with that information. They may be immortal, for the time being, but even so their diving abilities are that of normal humans. Maybe worse, these days, since all of them shy away from the open sea when they can, incapable of leaving each other out of their sight when one of them does go in.

Andy sighs before turning around. “Not a few days,” she says. “Months, probably. Maybe even a year.”

She expected Joe and Nicky to look surprised, but between the three of them, they all know there is relief in there as well. The whole search has been going on for long enough to affect them all in different ways, but she can tell it’s just not good for Nicky and Joe.

They’ve always been protective of each other, of her, but this trait has gotten a slightly manic quality of late. The whispered assurances at night dragging out of proportion, neither of them capable of stopping to look for the other, to stop touching the other even when they need to concentrate on the boat, on the search.

It’s unproductive, at the best of times, and it’s nuisance, for the rest.

They share a look with each other now, before Nicky says: “Alright, boss. You go and rest, we’ll get the boat back to shore.”

Andy nods, absentmindedly, and lets herself sink down to sit, leaning against the side of the boat. Closes her eyes.

She can always have the intention to rest even though she knows she won’t sleep all that much, in reality. It’s not the first time that she wishes she could dream of Quynh again, her quiet, wicked smile as it takes over her face, like the thousands and thousands of times she did before she found her. Before they found each other.

Back then, it was a treat to close her eyes and be rewarded with sleep, with hope. That there was someone else out there, someone just like her.

Now, she knows there are others like her, is never without others like her. But when she closes her eyes, all she sees is the distorted mask of the iron coffin, and Quynh’s screaming face behind it as she struggles with the guards.

Andy keeps her eyes closed for as long as she can take it, then she looks back out over the sea, runs her hand through her hair. Shakes herself.

It’s a wide world out there. Where is she even supposed to start?

**1778**

The first submarine is invented during the fight for American independence, but it takes them a while to get one that works to the coast of England. The man who came up with the idea abandoned his plans, deeming them not deadly enough, but is still wary when they try buy one from him, the potential that they could be British spies too great.

Andy loses her patience more than once trying to explain how he couldn’t be more wrong, how the last country she’d spy for is the country where- but she never actually gets to that part, and in the end, it is Joe who is successful.

They stay in America for a while longer, helping people on the ground deal with the fallout from the fighting as best as they can, and when they feel ready to focus on themselves again, they sail across the Atlantic again.

Andy still remembers where they left off, even if the sailor who told them about where Quynh was dropped into the ocean is long since dead. Most of his descendants, too, probably. The world spins too quickly, sometimes.

The submarine only seats two people, and even then not comfortably, so they decide Andy and Joe will be the ones to attempt the trip. Nicky is visibly unhappy with this, clinging to both of them for an uncomfortably long time before he lets them close the door of the submarine, maintaining the position of their ship they came on. Andy makes a mental note to attempt this once, and only the once, and to leave them alone for a while after.

“Ready, boss?” Joe asks, customary wide grin on his face, even as his eyes are a little tense. His feet are strapped onto the pedals that controls the water tank that’ll get them to sink in the water.

“Ready when you are.” Andy smiles, and nudges his shoulder with hers. Joe begins to pedal.

What she hadn’t thought of – and oh, how could she not have thought of this? – was how dark it was going to be. It takes mere moments before the darkness around them is absolute. Logically, she knows they’re pushing themselves further down, but she wouldn’t know if they were sinking or ascending. It all looks the same, in that it is all dark.

How would they even find Quynh like this, unless they accidentally graze the iron coffin with their submarine?

A crack in the exterior of the submarine makes her jump.

“What was that?” she asks. “Was it a fish?”

Joe leans forward to peer into the darkness, still pedalling. “I can’t really tell,” he says. “I don’t know if this thing will get us all the way to the bottom.”

Andy’s breath hitches. She can feel her heart in her throat all of a sudden, and there is a pressure over her ears like someone is insistently pushing them together, her head becoming smaller and smaller until it will no doubt explode.

 _I am going to die_ , she thinks with sudden clarity. _I am in my own iron coffin, and I am going to die_. _And worst of all, I made Joe come with me_.

She laughs first, then she cries, then she starts screaming.

It’s all a bit of a blur after that, but she knows that Joe must have stopped pedalling because he’s standing up, holding her against his chest.

“We’re not going to die today,” he whispers into her hair, even as she tries to pull it out with both her fists.

She can feel the pressure on her head easing, but that doesn’t help at all with her breathing, and she is convinced suddenly that they are still sinking, that they will hit the bottom of the ocean any moment now. They will die there, very soon after, and selfishly, she thinks, _at least I won’t be alone._

“You’re not alone,” Joe says into her hair, “You have Nicky and me, and we are going to get Quynh back as well.”

Her breathing doesn’t return to normal until she can see the sky through the submarine window again. Joe climbs out of the vessel first after he made sure that she is okay to sit by herself, and she overhears a brief conversation between him and Nicky.

“That was very fast, did you make it all the way to the ground?”

“I don’t think we’ll make it all the way to the ground with this one.”

“Oh, why— _mmh_ — I’m not complaining, but what brought this on?”

“Just kiss me once more.”

How many times has she thought of throwing herself into the sea just to be reunited with Quynh? How many times has she wished they’d taken her instead?

Andy sits in the submarine and looks out of the window, the line on the horizon where the blue of the sky meets the blue of the sea.

In the end, she’s never thrown herself into the sea, and she knows she never will. Because even she isn’t brave enough to face the possibility that the sea in all its might won’t end the suffering.

**1803**

There are moments when Andy swears she is never going to set foot on a ship again. There are more when she can’t seem to be keeping herself away.

Nicky and Joe don’t argue when she finds them missions that will have them sailing the oceans, both of them long since built a resistance to the choppy waters of both the sea and her moods.

And so they join the Balmis expedition, authorised by Charles IV of Spain, to vaccinate the people of South America against smallpox. There is supposed to be only one woman on board, and so Andy poses as a man for the duration of the trip. Cuts her hair short, and finds that she likes it. There isn’t much roundness to her these days anyway.

Isabel, the only woman on their expedition, is the rectoress of the orphaned boys they’re travelling with, who are carriers of the virus. Andy doesn’t quite know how the vaccination process is supposed to work, but she doesn’t really need to – Nicky is the one who joined as the deputy surgeon, with her and Joe as his assistants, and that works for her.

She finds that she spends more time with Isabel these days anyway. It’s not that she prefers her company to Joe and Nicky, not really. But there is something to be said third-wheeling for over a hundred years, and there’s also something to be said about female company.

Not that kind of female company. Although also that kind of female company. Only she doesn’t allow herself to go there, because if she does, her bones will start to ache again, like a limb of hers was torn clean off, and she won’t be able to look out at the sea at all.

“She must think you’re courting her,” Joe says in the evenings, sometimes.

“And what a delightful surprise for her that will be,” Andy responds then, flicks open a bottle of rum and starts chugging it.

“Don’t sell yourself short,” Nicky yawns. “You’d make a great husband.”

She smiles, but it’s not like that. Nicky and Joe know this, too, but she can’t be mad at them for wanting… _something_ for her, even if that notion is even more diffuse in their heads than it is in hers.

And so she has long talks with Isabel, walks with her and lets her pour her heart out. Sometimes it is helping others that helps ourselves the most.

They’re on a beach in Caracas when she spots it. There are chances, obviously, that this isn’t it. That it’s some other medieval English torture device that by some miracle has found its way into New Spain just while she happens to stroll along.

But the fact remains, that she would remember this monstrosity wherever she went. The iron tiles like an overbearing neck ruff. The shackles, even rusted and torn as they are. And that horrifying mask, burned forever in her memory together with Quynh’s screams as they tore her away.

Andy doesn’t even notice how she comes to crouch beside the rusted husk of the iron coffin. Her hand looks like it belongs to someone else as she traces its outline.

“Are you quite alright?” Isabel asks.

Andy knows she should nod by now, get up, snap out of it, smile at her and regale her with a tale of a dinner in London she’s never been to. But she can’t say anything.

Isabel looks more worried with every second that passes. “Shall I send for your friend? Your companion?”

Andy doesn’t comprehend, doesn’t understand what she’s saying. _Her companion_. How can she send for Quynh? Quynh is… But she can’t think it yet.

“Mr Al-Kaysani?”

_Oh, that’s who she means._

Andy nods bleakly, and doesn’t watch as Isabel hurries away. Feels herself flagging onto the crusted metal, her head on her arms, peering into the large holes that have appeared in the structure over the years. Big enough for a body to slip though, if…

She stays there until Nicky and Joe find her.

“Isabel said you were taken ill,” Nicky pants. They were sprinting across the beach to get to her, and he crouches next to her now, his broad palm heavy on her back. “Is this-”

But of course, he cuts himself off. Andy can’t see but she knows they’re exchanging a look over her body, and she just hangs there like an old beam of a ship, reduced to driftwood.

So, so old.

So old, she can feel every single one of her years when she finally allows herself to be pulled up and into a hug, her head resting on Nicky’s shoulder, Joe holding her hands sitting across from them. It’s all too much like when they’d first rescued her, and for a moment, it’s like no time at all has passed.

Then, Quynh had just been taken. Now, she is dead.

Andy abruptly pulls away, hurries behind some of the beach vegetation to throw up in peace. She waits until her arms stop shaking when she supports herself on her thighs with them, then staggers back to where Nicky has started a fire.

“Where’s Joe?” she asks, still wiping her mouth.

“Collecting some flowers,” Nicky says, not looking at her. “There isn’t enough space for a burial mound, but-“ He gestures to two pieces of wood he found, leaning against the coffin. At the right angle, they’d work as a shovel. Andy nods, once, twice, then grabs one and begins to dig.

It is always hard to have a funeral without a body. It is even harder to have a funeral for an immortal. Andy’s only had to do it once, so far, and a distant part of her brain had registered that it might happen again. But for the most part she’d thought, surely, that it would be her next. The Quynh’s prediction, her surviving them all, would be the cruellest twist fate could come up with.

The mood is sombre when Joe returns, the three of them shovelling away sand to make a well deep enough for the coffin, which is not right at all. There is always a strange sense of a celebration to Vietnamese funerals. Well, strange to her. She is finding it hard to celebrate anything like this.

After a while though, she begins to sing. It’s an old song, lost to the passage of time in most cultures now, and to her own mind as well. The melody is vague, and she often has to hum when she forgets the words.

But lifetimes and lifetimes ago, it was Quynh’s favourite. She continues to sing, repeats until Nicky and Joe can join in, and when the iron coffin is finally buried, they stand and sing until the fire burns to embers, until the sun crawls up again.

It is nothing of the pomp Quynh deserves, but it is something. And something, also, is left behind when they leave: The flowers, and the stones, and the burnt out fire, but also, Andy can’t help but think, a part of her soul, residing on that beach until she is allowed to die.

Maybe even after.

**1815**

It’s taken them years to track down the new one – _Sebastien_ , Andy corrects herself. It’s so hard to think of him with a name after only focussing on the fact that he was new, was other, for so long – but finally, they are settled in a safe house they procured in Poland some time ago. She can’t be sure whether the country outside the safe house is actually called Poland at the moment. These things appear to be as fleeting as mere human lives these days, and if Andy’s honest, there are other things she needs to focus on.

Like how to pass another endless hour, how to not trace this Frenchman’s – _Sebastien’s_ – eyes for a trace of… well, something, while Joe and Nicky give him a guide to immortality. As much as that’s even possible. It’s not like anyone can actually prepare you for the endless fuckery that is perpetual existence.

But she tries not to let that shine through her gaze so much as she pours them all a drink against the cold; tea, and whatever dark alcohol she can find. The new guy looks defeated, deflated somehow, even though she’s got nothing to compare it to. He looks like he could use it, is what she’s trying to say.

When Joe and Nicky have finished explaining how they think the dreams that led them to each other work, Sebastien nods. He graciously accepts the drink from Andy, but lets his gaze flicker between the three of them, eyes still cloudy, wary.

“So what happened to the fourth?”

Andy’s hand jerks, and she can feel the tea burning the skin on the back of her hand. It’s red and angry, and then it’s pale and smooth again. Joe and Nicky have gone very still.

The three of them share a look, but she’s not sure they’re all saying the same thing. The new guy can’t possibly _know_ about Quynh yet, about Lykon. And besides, he only said fourth. Not others.

“What do you mean?” she asks.

“I’ve been dreaming about a fourth person,” he says, “An Asian woman, I think. Never knew what to make of her when it was all mixed in with the three of you, but in the nights since you found me, it’s become clearer. She’s… drifting along in the sea, I think. There’s sand, and stones she’s running on, before she drowns again, every time. I wasn’t sure if the dream was connected, because the images with you change every time, and hers… well, it does not.”

He has the grace not to flinch when the tea cup Andy’s been holding shatters to the floor. There’s tea everywhere, and shards of porcelain, but no one moves to clear it up.

“Her name was Quynh,” Nicky says, his chin propped up on his hands. He and Joe launch into an explanation, that she’s not sure the new guy manages to follow. She’s not paying attention anyway, suddenly busy trying to ignore the buzzing her ears, the thoughts that are pushing through the darkness invading her brain. They all start with ‘if’ and end with unspeakable possibilities, emotions she’d forgotten what they felt like when they mixed with hope. She thinks she needs a moment. She thinks she might need to throw up.

The new guy is watching her, and she belatedly registers that Nicky and Joe are done catching him up, trying not to look in her direction. They know she can’t deal with their helplessness in the face of hers right now. How nice it would be to have that tea now.

“Yes,” she finally says to Sebastien. He didn’t ask a questions, but she knows what he’s thinking. “The guilt follows me every day.

He nods. Guilt, it seems, is an emotion he can appreciate.

“You need to rest,” Nicky says to Sebastien and gets up to put him to bed. He gives him a bemused look but doesn’t protest, wordlessly follows Nicky into the room with their beds.

“You should, too,” Joe starts, but stills when he sees Andy’s face.

“Yes,” she says, but makes no motion to follow Nicky. There are too many things happening in her head right now. Instead, she gets up and pulls her jacket on, leaves the house to walk out into the surrounding fields. Her whole body is shaking and no matter how fast she walks, it won’t stop.

But what can she do? She can’t climb into the new guy’s head, she can’t ask him to point her to where she needs to look. What on earth it is that she needs to do to find her heart at the bottom of the ocean.

_The bottom of the-_

She needs to scream, and so she does. Just screams and screams until she can feel her body being wracked by more than just the shaking, and sinks to the ground. The others will worry, she knows, but her not screaming wouldn’t exactly stop them from doing that, either. When she looks up, she realises she startled a bunch of horses that have been left outside in one of the fields.

They look at her, as wary as the new guy did just moments ago, and for the first time in what feels like a long time, she can feel a laugh worming its way out of her.

“Hello you,” she says, to the horses. Patiently waits until they accept her again, then swings herself atop one of the strongest ones and pushes him through the countryside, rides and rides and rides until she’s sure he’s going to throw her off.

 _Just to feel something_ , she thinks, _until all the noise no one else can hear is only a whisper._

The next morning, the new guy finds her sitting on the porch, and offers her a cigarette, which she accepts. She hasn’t slept, but that hardly matters.

“How long do these nightmares last?” he asks. He realises too late the kind of word he’s used, but it’s not like she would have believed him if he’d tried to tell her that Quynh’s existence wasn’t so bad.

“Until we find each other,” she says, and takes a drag of her cigarette. He has no comforting words for her, and as much as she’d like to, she also doesn’t have any for him.

“I dreamed of Quynh for,” a single tear leaks out of her eye, she sputters at the notion, “centuries.”

There it is. She’d been looking for Quynh longer than she’s been missing now. Missing, and thought dead. But will she really have to do everything and everything all over again?

Booker leans on the porch railing.

“I, uhm,” he starts. “I can let you know what she sees. How she is. From time to time, if you would like.”

She looks up at him, and at least she doesn’t cry this time, but she doesn’t hide the wet gleam of her eyes.

“Thank you, _Livre_ ,” she says. “I think I’d like that very much.”

**2019**

The wind is harsh in Andy’s face, the sea breeze a clean, sharp pain in her lungs. It tugs at her hair, blows it across her face until she can barely see where she can steer her sailing boat to, but she doesn’t mind.

Two days ago, Booker and Nile had both come awake in the middle of the night, gasping for air in the way of bad dreams. Andy barely thought anything of it, Nicky already sitting up and ready to talk them down, Joe behind him, solid and bleary-eyed. Only it had been more than that. Nile and Booker sat there and stared at each other for so long that she’d grown restless with it, nearly snapped at them when Booker said: “Boss.”

He didn’t look at her, but he didn’t need to. She knew what it meant when he said it like _that_.

“She’s on a beach,” Nile whispered. Eyes wide, voice still choked.

“White sand,” Booker said, “very turquoise, everything. Maybe a pacific island?”

Andy had been up and ready before he’d even finished the sentence, could see the confusion brewing between Nicky’s eyebrows but paid him no mind. “Let me know if you see anything else,” she said, and walked out the door.

Her phone doesn’t have reception out here, just off the coast of Hawaii, but she knows it is going to happen, she can feel it. She’s received two texts from Booker in the last two days, one that said “Beach hut, reef, palm trees. Definitely pacific,” and the next a picture she believes Joe must have drawn under instructions. It is not great on the detail, but it has everything that is important: Quynh, sitting on a beach, looking out at the sea. Arms around her body, one hand splayed over her own collar bone.

She is impressed by Joe’s memory, wants to hug him through the phone. But then, she’s not the only one who’s spent the better part of five centuries just remembering.

It is early evening when she docks her boat at a deserted beach and begins to walk. She looks at the image saved on her phone from time to time, but stops after a while and just walks. Eyes closed, heartbeat reverberating through her body.

 _Quynh, Quynh, Quynh_.

She can taste her name on her every breath, can feel her like she’s there in the blood running through her veins.

In the end, it’s Quynh who sees her first. Meets her eyes with the all the casual depth only a woman of thousands of years of age can. Andy loses her balance, nearly stumbles, the weight of the world tipping off her shoulders and then sliding right back on top of them, dragging her into the sand.

Quynh is sitting by a fire in front of her beach hut, clad in a shawl of roughly-hewn fabric that has artfully arranged around herself. She is the most beautiful thing Andy has ever seen. The most beautiful, the most terrifying.

She can’t breathe.

So she just stands there, useless, mentally grasping at straws of what it is she needs to do now. Now that she is standing here in the face of all the five hundred years that separate her from the person who was once her everything, and has since become everything she’s ever lost. Five hundred years, and, currently, 20 metres of sand.

But she can’t breathe, and she can’t move, and the words won’t come either, not as she stands there and looks at Quynh and not as Quynh stands up and walks over to her. Comes to stand right close to her.

If she leans forward now, their noses would brush. She could taste Quynh’s breath, and the thought alone is heady enough to send her head spinning. That, and the guilt that is gnawing at her insides, trying to break free from her ribs like a caged bird. If she faints now, would Quynh catch her? Or would she leave her lying in the sand, waiting for the tide to come? Inexplicably, Andy feels like she deserves both.

But she can’t say that.

“ _Quynh_ ,” she whispers instead. Reverently, desperately. Hopes it says what she needs it to. “Quynh, I am-“

But before she can say anything, before she can apologise, Quynh is on her. Her hands grappling with Andy’s shirt, pulling her into her body like she could be blown away at any moment, like she has to hold on for dear life. Hold on, hold on, to make sure it is real.

Andy doesn’t know what to do with her hands, but when they finally find Quynh’s hair she nearly howls with relief. She doesn’t know when she starts crying, only that before long, they are standing there, sobbing into each other’s shoulders, the only thing keeping them upright a shared unwillingness to let each other go.

“Quynh,” she says when she can breathe again – and she can, she can breathe in her hair, the light scent of salt and the fire, and her, her, _her_ – “Quynh, I am so-“

“ _Shh_.” It’s barely audible, but Quynh places a finger on her lips. It’s warm and dry, and Andy wants to kiss it more than anything. But she needs to speak her piece first.

“You need to know that I never- Quynh, I am so sorry, I’m-“

The tears come streaming again, but this time, Quynh is holding her face, wiping them away with the backs of her hands.

“ _An_ ,” she says. Reverently, desperately.

Andy will never stop crying again. “I promised I’d never stop looking for you.”

“And you didn’t,” Quynh whispers. “I saw you, through Booker’s eyes. Through Nile’s. And whenever I came back to life, there you were. Looking for me.”

And she had, and she did. Her fingers find Quynh’s hands, holding them, holding her face.

“If you let me, I will never let you go,” she says, almost too quietly against the sea and the stars.

“Let’s try to hold on until tomorrow,” Quynh says, and wraps her arms around Andy’s neck. “And then the day after that, and the day after that.”

**later**

Andy wakes in the middle of the night – or is it the middle of the day? It can’t be, it’s dark outside – to the sound of rumbling thunder. The bed is empty, beside her. If anything, this disorients her more than the fact that she’s not quite sure if she’s woken from sleep, or just a nap.

She rubs her eyes. _Where is Quynh?_

After a short debate in her head, she dregs herself up and pads out of their room into the spacious hallway that leads into an open plan apartment. They’re staying in a high-rise building in Chengdu, China, and apart from the three bedrooms and a bathroom, all the walls are made of floor-length windows.

It is not hard to spot Quynh once Andy’s eyes adjust, her svelte figure a small black outline against the lights of the sleeping city and the rain pouring down around them, long droplets chasing each other down the glass.

Andy stops for a moment, stares. That, there, is the sound of her heart beginning to beat again. She didn’t even notice she’d started to panic. She can relax now, her love is safe, alive, only no one has told her heart yet.

She makes her way over to Quynh, careful to approach at an angle that lets the other woman spot her in the reflection of the glass before she comes to rest her chin on her shoulder. Andy’s hands settle on Quynh’s waist, briefly, before snaking around her waist. Quynh has her arms crossed in front of her body, like she’s holding herself together somehow. Her posture slackens under Andy’s touch, and she cards her fingers through Andy’s so that they are both holding her like a bow made of two bodies.

“Can’t sleep?” Andy asks, pressing a kiss to her shoulder.

Quynh nods, barely, but meets her eyes in the window.

“The rain,” she says after a while, “I forgot-“

But she doesn’t finish her sentence, only her shoulders tense ever so slightly.

Andy pulls her closer. “Is it bad?”

It is day by day, still. Quynh does marvellously well with water when it comes to drinking it, a feat that Andy finds hard to imagine and admires more than she has anything in a long time. Other things, they’re harder. Showers are okay, sometimes, but Quynh has not yet let herself be pulled into a bathtub with a foamy bubble bath, let Andy wash her, take care of her. What if the rain is too much as well?

Quynh shakes her head. “I forgot it made this sound, too,” she whispers. “All this power.”

And then, to Andy’s infinite surprise, she laughs. “It’s strangely beautiful, is it not?”

Her smile, small as it might be, knocks the breath clean out of Andy’s lungs. So she presses more kisses to Quynh’s shoulder, her neck, until she can feel her relax. Until she lets her posture grow heavy with weariness.

“Not as beautiful as you,” Andy mouths against her throat. It garners her an eyeroll, and a tug on her hand.

The rain outside is so heavy that the light from the buildings around them is diffuse, the whole city in front of them coated in a watery, orange glow.

“Something’s will never change, hmm?”

“Not if I can help it,” Andy replies, and she hopes that Quynh knows all she means by that. They stand there for a moment longer, listening to the rush of rain and the thunder, until Quynh turns in Andy’s arms.

“I don’t want to be out there,” she says, “but I don’t mind being in here. It feels safe, with you.”

Andy takes Quynh’s hand and pulls it towards her face.

“You are,” she whispers, kisses every one of her knuckles, grazing them with her lips, her teeth, like a rosary. “You are.”

**\+ bonus**

Booker and Nile are using the winter to tour the French-speaking countries of Africa, brushing up on local culture and scouting for potential new missions. Joe and Nicky are holed up in an Icelandic cottage with a glass roof, snuggling on a sheepskin under the Northern lights and pretending that beds haven’t been invented yet.

As someone who has been around for the invention of beds, Andy doesn’t see the appeal.

Cold morning light traces her eyelids, waking her softly, and she gropes around for a cushion that she can press over her face. She doesn’t want to check yet if Quynh has opened the curtains of their hotel room window, or if they forgot to close it the night before. It doesn’t matter.

They’re staying in Moscow, in the kind of lavish and plush place that comes with stars on the door, concierges and maître d’s and a bunch of other employees with French job titles who are paid to appear happy to cater to their every whim. As a result, they haven’t left the bed for days.

It is king size, with downy pillows and blankets that respond to her body temperature. Truly, why anyone would _willingly_ forgo such pleasures is a mystery to her.

Andy groans into both of her pillows when the blanket she’s wrapped up in is peeled back, revealing the lower part of her body. She isn’t wearing much, a pair of knickers, maybe, something dark and comfortable, and so she bristles ever so slightly when her bare legs are exposed to the world. But the fine hairs on the back of them only begin to stand to attention when a kiss is dropped to her ankle. She breaks out in goosebumps on her entire body, in fact, when Quynh moves up her leg, placing tiny, gentle kisses over her calves, her thighs. What a way to be woken up. Quynh’s lip catches in the crook of Andy’s knee, and her breath hitches.

“ _An_ ,” Quynh chuckles, her lips bumping against the curve of Andy’s ass as she speaks. Andy’s heart swells at the sound of her old nickname. To think she’d gone centuries thinking she was never going to hear it again – but it’s not a thought worth dwelling on, and so she banishes it with a languid smile and pokes her head out from under her pillows to look at Quynh.

“I thought you were awake,” Quynh says. Andy’s smile is mirrored on her face, and Andy knows, true and forever, that every effort, every length she’d gone to to retrieve Quynh from the sea has been worth it. To see this smile once, to see it for the rest of eternity.

“Awake, awake,” she replies, stretching out. “But at what cost?”

Andy pouts, her gaze laden with sleep, but it has the desired effect as Quynh leans down, gracefully sliding into the bed until she’s lying half next to her.

“The most beautiful woman in the world on top of you?”

“Oh no,” Andy sighs, “where have you learned to make such compelling arguments?”

Quynh rolls her eyes, but she is still smiling, and then she is kissing Andy, and then they don’t say anything for a while.

Still, Quynh interrupts their kiss far earlier than Andy would like, pulls back to sit up. Andy makes a sound that she would deny even under torture, at gunpoint, with knives to her throat. (Not that they ever had much of a lasting effect anyway.) But she makes it, and Quynh smiles at her, bats at her fingers that are trying to pull her back down.

“Why don’t you come up?” she says, beckoning with her finger.

“But I haven’t been up for days,” Andy sighs again, but it’s a sound on the verge of a whine. “I don’t think I remember how anymore.”

“Lies,” Quynh laughs, “but also a pity. I wanted to show you something.”

Andy lets her head fall back into her pillow – her wonderful, wonderful pillow – for one more moment, then she peels herself onto her elbows. “What is it?”

She’s rewarded with another kiss for her efforts, but already, Quynh is getting up and throwing clothes at her.

“Oh, you mean I have to get _up_ up for this?”

Quynh only hums, but she helps her into her trousers, her pullovers and a thick jacket, and doesn’t even protest when Andy continues to try and derail her efforts with further kisses. She draws the line at Andy trying to take her clothes back off though, and swats her fingers not too gently.

Then she pulls Andy out of their hotel room, down the corridor and into the lobby, until they stumble into the bright mid-day in the middle of the Red Square. And it truly is a bright day.

“Look,” Quynh says, and she doesn’t need to gesture. The whole place is covered in white today, the red of the churches only a faint pink glow underneath thickets of snow.

But Andy isn’t looking at the snow. Not really. Too distracting the glee on Quynh’s face, the wonder in her eyes.

“I think I forgot what it looked like, for a while,” Quynh says. “Can you imagine?”

“No,” Andy says, but that’s a lie. Of course she can imagine forgetting. But she’s spent longer remembering. “Shall we go exploring? See if they still make pelmeni the way you like them at _Saratov’s_?”

Quynh nods, smiles, and takes her hand. It’s a wide world out there. Who says it isn’t theirs to take?

**Author's Note:**

> Not to push literature on you, but the expedition to vaccinate people in South America actually happened (likely without The Old Guard on board) and Isabel Zendal Gómez is a real person, and you can read a book about her! It's called _Saving the World_ , which I thought was very on brand for this fandom, and was written by Julia Alvarez.
> 
> Also you may have noticed Quynh calling Andy 'An' in this one - that is of course lifted straight from [here](https://killingdoll.tumblr.com/post/624157862735888384/an-is-a-vietnamese-name-that-can-be-used-for), because I absolutely lost my mind at the fact that it is a gender-neutral name that apparently means _safety_.
> 
> Feel free to shout at me on tumblr (if the amount of posts linked wasn't a dead give away that I might enjoy such a thing).


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